Breaking Out of the Income Trap

It would be funny if it wasn't so sad. We are taught that the key to happiness is making more and more money, and living a more and more extravagant lifestyle. This sounds like it makes sense on paper. After all, the more money we make and spend, the nicer our things, the more we'll be able to enjoy them. But this belief is nothing more than a trap that dooms you to a lot of pain, heartache, mental anguish and wasted time. Here's how you break the trap.

There's a metaphor that I like to use that first convinced me to stop playing video games, and then taught me to stop believing in the income trap. I used to play a lot of role playing games and online games. Basically, in these games the goal is to keep advancing your levels by doing work and beating monsters. When you gained a level, you became richer and more powerful. But you also started to fight stronger monsters as you advanced through the game. So basically, you kept getting stronger, you kept getting richer and kept buying cooler gear, just so you could keep defeating monsters to gain levels and get stronger and buy cooler gear so you could fight bigger monsters.


Does this trap sound familiar? Too often we "advance" in our lives and just end up doing the same things we were doing before.

So how do you break the trap? The first step is to realize it's a trap. Hopefully you understand that by this point. If not, re-read the first two paragraphs until it all sets in. Next, you're going to want to get used to living well below your means.

Let me explain. The problem with the income trap is that you never "get ahead." Getting ahead does not mean nicer things, it means living a nicer life. It means being able to live the life you want, and not living for your things. It means spending as little of your time working for money, and as much of your time working for passion and love. The very honest joke about the rat race is that you win by being able to leave it. This is getting ahead, not having a nicer pair of jeans.

Now, I love nice jeans. I like nice things. I like money, and I vastly prefer having more of it than less of it. But you need to understand money's proper place first.

To do this, you need to downsize your life. You need to start living well below your means. Start spending less, start buying less fancy things, start saving more and investing more. Start actively attempting to raise your income at the same time. Essentially, you want to create a giant gap between your lifestyle and your income.

This probably doesn't make sense, but let me explain. You want to separate your happiness and lifestyle from your income. You want to be happy without, and know what makes you satisfied when you don't have the distraction of the income trap. You want to completely separate yourself from it TEMPORARILY. There's nothing wrong with buying $200 jeans when you know that while you might enjoy them, they have nothing to do with how happy you will be with your life.

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